I walked home feeling like I’d been put back together a little bit. Like the pressure from Ken’s embrace had kind of shored up the loose parts of me that had been ready to crumble. Like maybe I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought.

I also felt the power that Knight held over me beginning to lift. No longer would the story of what had happened on C Hall be about the time I got attacked by my ex while a hundred kids did nothing but watch. Now, it would be the story of the time a stubborn football-team dropout with aqua-blue eyes and sandy-brown hair chased him off.

I smiled to myself as I made the rounds, turning on every light in my apartment and triple-checking all the locks. I called my parents to tell them about my acceptance letter. I called Juliet to tell her, too. I did not call Goth Girl. She was still on my shit list for telling Hans that I’d been hanging out at Jason’s.

Bitch.

That only left Hans. I knew he’d said he “wouldn’t have cell service,” but it couldn’t hurt to leave him a voicemail, right? And besides, maybe he was already on his way home from “camping” and would have a signal.

And maybe I kind of sort of wanted to check up on him a little bit.

I sat down on the couch we’d “borrowed” from Hans’s parents’ basement—the same one he used to pull outside whenever he had people over—and dialed his number as a churning cesspool of acid swirled in my stomach.

It’s fine, I told myself. He’s either going to answer or you’re going to leave a voicemail. It’s not like you’re deactivating a bomb. Jesus.

Ring.

Ring.

Doodle-oodle-oo.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and listened.

Doodle-oodle-oo.

It was Hans’s ringtone!

I leaped off the sofa and listened again, trying to figure out which direction to go.

Doodle-oodle-oo.

I followed the sound into the bedroom where Hans’s four-poster bed stood in a state of disarray in the center of the room. The only other furniture in there was a dresser, also “borrowed” from the Oppenheimers, and two cheap bedside tables that I’d bought at Walmart.

Doodle-oodle-oo.

I rummaged through a pile of dirty clothes on the floor of our walk-in closet until I found it, tucked inside the pocket of his dark gray Dickies.

Hans’s cell phone.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the small hunk of plastic. I’d never gone through somebody’s phone before. Not because I had morals, but because, with the guys I dated, I was simply too afraid of what I might find.

But I was sick of being afraid. I needed to sleep at night. I needed to eat without wanting to throw up. I needed answers. And that little black Motorola had them.

Having made up my mind, I took a deep breath and illuminated the screen, ready to face whatever I’d find inside, but the word PASSCODE in all caps stopped me in my tracks. Four blank spaces glowed beneath it, taunting me.

He has a fucking password?

I tried his birthday. I tried my birthday. I tried 1234. I tried his parents’ address. I tried our address. I was about to try a ball-peen hammer when the digital clock in the top-right corner of the screen changed from 11:10 to 11:11.

Eleven eleven.

I pictured the whites of John the Psychic’s eyes as he muttered that number to me the winter before. It had become my lucky number, my favorite time, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe that number had the power to deliver me to the truth.

I crossed my fingers, held my breath, and typed in 1111.

It worked.

“Thank you, John,” I whispered out loud, hoping that, wherever he was, he could hear me.

First, I scrolled through his list of Contacts. Half of them were girls’ names. And by girls, I mean strippers. They all ended in I. Kandi, Mandi, Bambi, Tammi, Toni, Baloni.

And there, at the bottom, in the V section, was Victoria motherfucking Beasley.

The traitor.

I checked Hans’s call log to see when she’d tattled on me, but I didn’t get an exact answer.

Because that bitch had been calling Hans almost every day for the last two months.

Bile climbed its way up my throat, burning my esophagus and choking me with its acrid taste. Fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there, forty-two minutes while I was at work, fifty-nine minutes while Hans was supposed to be in class.

Wait. What? No. No, no, no…

I hopped off the bed in a panic and raced to the dining room. The only furniture in that small space was my computer desk and a chair. My backpack lay on the desk, full to bursting with textbooks and notebooks and supplies of all kinds. Hans’s lay slumped over on the floor in the corner. I grabbed it and dumped it out in the middle of the floor. Books and crumpled papers and prescription pill bottles and ziplock baggies full of weed and tiny glass vials with white powdered residue inside tumbled to the ground in an avalanche of truth.

I sank to the floor and admired the pile with someone else’s eyes. Someone removed from the situation. Someone who would give me a full report later, when I was ready to hear it.

She looked at everything, taking mental notes for me. She commented that every paper had a failing grade on it, and none of them had a date later than early October. She deduced that Hans must have dropped out right before midterms, which was probably around the time that he converted his backpack into a drug storage unit. Oxycodone, Percocet, Lortab, OxyContin—eight orange prescription bottles in all.

Then that girl went to work. She didn’t want to leave a mess on the floor for me to find later. She was far too considerate for that. Instead, she carried the contents of Hans’s backpack to the coffee table and arranged everything as if she were creating a beautiful table display at Macy’s. She stacked the pristine, never-opened textbooks in the back, for some height. Fanned the stack of papers out in front so that the failing grades were visible on each one. She created an orange pyramid out of the prescription bottles, off to the side for a mid-height focal point, then laid the clear vials in an asterisk shape on top of the papers, for just a touch of sparkle.

Oh!

Running into the bedroom, she came back with the finishing touch. The cherry that would top off her arrangement of lies.

Hans’s cell phone.

Now when BB got back, maybe the truth would be easier for her to look at. Now it was pretty. Organized. Under control.

Unlike that filthy apartment.

Maybe I should vacuum, the girl thought. Mop the kitchen floor. I can’t remember the last time BB dusted. Or made her bed. The tile in the shower is mildewed. I could take care of that real quick. Maybe empty the trash cans while I’m at it.

I didn’t feel. I didn’t think. I cleaned. I cleaned and I cleaned and arranged and organized until the sun came up and my arms shook from hunger and my eyes went blurry from lack of sleep. Then, I cleaned some more.

It wasn’t until the birds were chirping, the sun was streaming in through the spotless sliding glass door, and I was in the middle of rearranging the candleholders on the mantel for the third time when I finally heard his key in the lock.